get warm. "Everything has gone wrong since you got to coming here, and I
think you are a regular Jonah. I find sand in my sugar, kerosene in the
butter, the codfish is all picked off, and there is something wrong every
time you come here. Now you leave."

"I aint no Joner," said the boy as he wiped his nose on his coat sleeve,
and reached into a barrel for a snow apple. "I never swallered no whale.
Say, do you believe that story about Joner being in the whale's belly, all
night? I don't. The minister was telling about it at Sunday school last
Sunday, and asked me what I thought Joner was doing while he was in there,
and I told him I interpreted the story this way, that the whale was fixed
up inside with upper and lower berths, like a sleeping car, and Joner had
a lower berth, and the porter made up the berth as soon as Joner came in
with his satchel, and Joner pulled off his boots and gave them to the
porter to black, and put his watch under the pillow and turned in. The
boys in Sunday school all laffed, and the minister said I was a bigger
fool than Pa was, and that was useless. If you go back on me, now, I won't
have a friend, except my chum and a dog, and I swear, by my halidom, that
I never put no sand in your sugar, or kerosene in your butter. I admit the
picking off of the codfish, but you can charge it to Pa, the same as you
did the eggs that I pushed my chum over into last summer, though I thought
you did wrong in charging Christmas prices for dog days eggs. When my
chum's Ma scraped his pants she said there was not an egg represented on
there that was less than two years old. The Sunday school folks
have all gone back on me, since I put kyan pepper on the stove, when they
were singing 'Little Drops of Water,' and they all had to go out doors and
air themselves, but I didn't mean to let the pepper drop on the stove. I
was just holding it over the stove to warm it, when my chum hit the funny
bone of my elbow. Pa says I am a terror to cats. Every time Pa says
anything, it gives me a new idea. I tell you Pa has got a great brain, but